


water of life

by dramaturgicallycorrect, veryniceandgood



Series: niall and jack (and sometimes harry) [4]
Category: Dunkirk (2017) RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17198789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect, https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryniceandgood/pseuds/veryniceandgood
Summary: “Could do with the pitter patter of little feet,” Jack says, and Niall hesitates, thinking,christ, not a baby?“Four little feet,” Jack adds, and Niall starts to sweat, thinking,christ, not two babies.[Or five times Jack wanted a dog and one time he actually got one.]





	water of life

**Author's Note:**

> Happy liminal spacemas!

_1\. October 2018_

There’s been a bit of a grimace playing around the edges of Jack’s face for the last half hour, flirting with his eyebrows and the tips of his lips. Niall wants to shake him by the shoulders, shout in his face, “Don’t you know this is the birthplace of modern golf?” until Jack wakes the hell up.

Only Jack _knows_ this is the birthplace of modern golf, because Jack surprise arranged the spot from his old film connections for his anniversary present on a chilly morning in October. Jack hadn’t thought it was all that, what with Niall having gone to the Dunhill Links Championship some two or three times, but this feels different. It’s not a production, it’s not for the good of his management company, it’s not in support of Rory or anything.

It’s just the two of them, fucking around at a class tee time, no one watching Niall closely for his every reaction, capturing each breath on film or the cloud or god knows whatever else will outlive him. They can take their time, fuck around enough that Jack’s chuckling and forgetting to frown, stage an epic golf club sword fight that nearly made their caddie piss himself before they dismissed him back to the club.

And besides, it’s the Old Course, like, the _proper_ course, Tommy’s own, as it were. And he’s sharing it with only Jack. And his terrible bloody stance.

“No,” Niall says abruptly, a knee-jerk reaction.

Jack pauses, slowly lifting his head to look at Niall. “No?”

“Feet wrong, knees wrong, hips wrong, elbows wrong, wrists wrong, shirt wrong.”

“Fair play on the others, but how on earth could my shirt be wrong?” Jack looks down at himself, then back up at Niall, with an eyebrow crooked up. “It’s ghastly, it’s camp, and you bought it for me.”

“It’s not tucked in.”

That’ll be rule number five of the day. Niall tips his sunglasses up into his hair to narrow his eyes at Jack, remembering rather clearly that it had been tucked in quite snugly this morning, during breakfast, and the last three holes.

Jack spreads his arms wide, leaving his hips open and vulnerable. “Go on then.”

Niall throws him a look. “Go on yourself.”

Jack takes his time unbuckling his belt, flicking the button of his trousers free, until Niall’s wondering if he’s about to be on the receiving end of a strip tease. Niall likes a cheeky strip tease, of course he does, but he also likes maintaining his golf sponsorship, not being arrested for public indecency, and actually enjoying the presents he’s been gifted.

Jack tucks his tails in quickly, though, mindful of the unimpressed look on Niall’s face, and turns to do a couple of practice swings. He thumps the club back on the ground, leaning his weight on it in a way that makes Niall wince, and announces, “I think you should _Ghost_ me.”

“I’m sorry?”

He turns again, curving to line up his shot proper, then nods his head over at Niall to join him. “Cuddle up behind me. Show me how it’s done.”

Niall waves an impatient hand at him. He’s _this close_ to pointing out exactly how well behaved _Niall_ had been throughout all of the suit fitting with Paul and Ellie that he had arranged for Jack, even though Jack was in his pants for a good portion of the event. It’s about respect. Decorum. Other grown up words.

“I’m not ghosting you. Swing the damn club, Lowden.”

Jack narrows his eyes at Niall, who narrows his eyes right back, and then narrows his eyes at the golf ball, which does nothing, as it’s an inanimate object. Then he swings.

Straight into the trees. Niall could be generous as say maybe it was carried on by the fall breeze, but it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. He tries carefully not to show anything on his face, but the message doesn’t translate to the rest of his body because his hand comes up to subconsciously scrub through his hair.

“That’s not bad,” Jack’s saying, his voice high like he’s satisfied.

Niall can’t honestly imagine how it could have gone any worse, really, unless Jack had somehow managed to hit it back in the direction of the last hole. It’ll take them ages to find the ball, they’ll probably end up abandoning the search and just lining up a fresh one at the edge of the trees.

“Yeaaaah,” Niall agrees slowly. He thumps Jack on the back as he shuffles away so Niall can tee up when he’s ready. “I genuinely can’t believe you got through that entire shoot without learning to appreciate golf.”

“Yeah.” Jack exhales, his lips fluttering to make an obnoxious sound. “Unbelievable, huh?” he says like he doesn’t really find it all that unbelievable.

“Eh, you’ll learn to love it.”

“Oh, I love some parts.” Jack grabs a surreptitious handful of Niall’s arse and Niall bats him away, laughing.

“I know you do, you old pervert.”

Jack grabs for him again, but Niall hops out of reach back over to where his bag’s stood up and waiting. He’ll blame the flush on his face on the sun and all, but there’s nothing but Jack to account for his grin. “Jesus, wait until we’re in the steam at least.”

He gives the area a quick scan but it’s just as deserted as it had been the last time Niall checked, save the older couple across the way, small enough in the distance to look like mirages. Their hands are flying around them, pointing this way and that, the only indication that they might be arguing, and Niall’s smart enough not to see a future in that. If only because he’s sure Jack won’t last more than a couple of trips like this before he’s begging off golf indefinitely.

Niall pulls a club out and pauses, just for a moment, basking in the light of their first anniversary, the first of what could be many, what he hopes will be many. It’s exhilarating, the little formula he’s concocted; _Jack + Niall + Future equals_ …

“Can’t we just go get some lunch?” Jack wheedles, interrupting wherever that train of thought was going to go. “The club’s doing a roast today.”

“No.” Niall waves his club threateningly at Jack’s chest. “You promised me a full game and you’re gonna give it to me.”

Jack sighs, put upon, long-suffering, clutching at his chest as though that were going to provide him any sort of protection from Niall.

“What’s not to like?” Niall argues. “Fresh air, sunshine, look at the views! You love that shite.”

Niall loops an arm around his waist and turns him out toward the rolling vistas in front of them. The greens so lovingly maintained by the grounds crew Jack has met and spent time with, each element of the course perfectly designed to challenge the best of the best.

It’s practically art.

Jack scoffs. “Could get all of that from a walk with Dasha. Be a hell of a lot cheaper too.”

Niall rolls his eyes and moves back to the tee. Any counter arguments about sportsmanship, the love of the game, walking around with a purpose instead of just to get your legs moving, all of that goes unsaid. It’s nothing Jack hasn’t already heard and dismissed.

“You know, _you_ should get a dog,” Jack says, as if it’s just occurred to him, as if they’ve never had this conversation before.

Niall knows just where that’s headed, and he’s not having any of it. So he turns Jack’s game back on him.

He squats slowly to set up his tee, but Jack doesn’t take the bait. He adjusts his stance here and there, pushing his bum out a bit more than is recommended for a proper shot, maybe taking his time with it because he can feel the heat of Jack’s appreciative stare on him just about as surely as the heat of the sun. Niall’s a generous man, when he wants to be, and Jack really does have a thing about these chinos.

It doesn’t work on Jack any better than it did on Niall.

“You know, they say getting a dog can actually lower your blood pressure - ”

Niall rears back and swings.

Jack makes an appreciative noise, like even he can tell it’s a beauty of a shot.

Niall stands frozen, club still suspended in the air over his shoulder, watching his ball arch gorgeously until it bounces to a stop just feet from the hole, an easy putt. God, he wishes someone had been filming that. Rosey’s never gonna believe him.

“Very nice shot,” Jack says softly, Niall can just barely hear him, so as not to break the quiet reverence the moment deserves. It feels momentous - he’ll have a bloody eagle on a hole in St. Andrews Links. It’s almost worth retiring over right here and now, he’ll never do better.

And then Jack continues, at full volume, “They’re good for anxiety too, dogs - keep you active, keep you company - ”

Niall finally drops his club to his side, grinning helplessly over at him until Jack’s grinning at him too.

He walks over and gives Jack a firm kiss, pressing chest to chest to soak up the warmth there. Jack’s gloved hand comes up to cup Niall’s chin, the mesh on his palm scratching over Niall’s stubble, like he’s going to keep them there snogging until a caddie comes to tell them off.

There’ll be plenty of time for that. Later.

“Come on, idiot.” Niall lifts his eyebrows. “I’m hitting that in, then we’ll hit the steam.”

\--

_2\. January 2019_

Jack is punctual and Niall admires that in a man - six on the nose his phone’s ringing in his hands. The lads, unfortunately, are anything but punctual, coming or going, either which way. Niall hovers beside them at the door, wondering if he can get away with saying, _would you kindly fuck off, my boyfriend’s calling_.

It’s been a long session, all day spent breaking in the studio Niall’s just built into the basement of his house. Nothing’s due on a schedule, Capitol as open as ever, but when the muse strikes, Niall’s not about to give that up. However, now the muse has come and gone and the boys haven’t, so Niall walks away to say, “Hang on, I’m just seeing the lads out.”

“Take your time, love,” Jack says, warm and soft enough in his ear that if Niall closed his eyes, he could maybe feel his chest pressed to Niall’s back, his beard scratching at the side of Niall’s face, his hands coming to rest on Niall’s hips, nudging and nudging at him until Niall finally gives in and cages him against the wall like Jack wants.

Take his time? His time is now. “Bye, good bye,” Niall says loudly.

 _Right right,_ they all chorus, _good craic today, Niall_ and the like carrying them out the door until it swings shut with a definitive, satisfying thunk. He whirls around, heading back to the studio to collect up all the shit they’ve left behind before starting on dinner. He can hear the faint echo of music in the background, like Jack’s got the turntable on something.

“I’m switching to video, don’t hang up.”

By some miracle Jack doesn’t, and they connect. But Jack’s got the phone tipped up to the ceiling like he often does when they’re Facetiming, like he hasn’t quite gotten hang of the fact that when they do this, Niall wants to see his face.

“Lemme see it.”

“What? It’s fine, Niall, I’ve not burnt the place down.” He does a scan of the room he’s in too fast for Niall to even recognize it.

“I meant your face, idiot, turn the damn thing around.”

Jack turns the phone around, the actual whole phone around in his hand, so it’s pointing at his neck and his loosened tie under the crisp white shirt. Niall waits patiently as Jack mumbles something and the view screen goes wild, nearly seizure-inducing, before Jack’s back, front facing camera sorted.

“Hey,” Niall says. He can’t fight the grin that overtakes his face, and he really doesn’t want to.

Jack fixes him with a stare, heated and appraising and greedy all at once. “Hey.”

They’re soft moments, when Niall comes to the same conclusion he always seems to whenever he sees Jack’s face, _this is the man I love_. The conclusion shifted gently from _that’s the man I like_ too subtly for Niall to have even registered it, to set it down in his internal calendar as something to remember and celebrate.

The thought doesn’t scare him anymore, not like it used to, not only because Jack’s stayed, longer than anyone else has, but Niall’s stayed too.

“How’s the song?”

“It’s good, I like it.” Niall scratches at his chin, looking away with the weight of it. “Think it might be, like. The One.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I want it for the lead single. We’ll have to lay down the proper tracks back at Capitol, but the demo is sick.”

“That’s great, love.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Niall says softly, answering a few stray questions here and there as he hauls the dishes into the kitchen, but he’s not keen to give too much away. He wants it to be polished by the time he hands it over to Jack, or at least something rough from the studio cut. It’s one thing to lie about on the couch with his feet in Jack’s lap, fucking around with his guitar, but quite another to have something proper.

“One sec.”

Niall transfers the call between his phone and his iPad and places that in the niche in the backsplash so it’s out of the way of the sink as he rinses.

“Full view, very nice.” Jack squints properly at his phone, where Niall’s whole chest is now on display. “Are you not wearing a shirt?”

“I always record shirtless.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Are you... jealous?” Niall lifts a teasing eyebrow at the screen.

Jack hums. “Just interested.”

“Interested,” Niall says. He nudges the camera until it’s mostly showing off the kitchen, with the hint of his shoulder in the corner. “How d’ya like that? A little bare shoulder for your evening.”

He gives his shoulder a little wiggle when Jack says seriously, “Very seductive.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know the readers of Girl Talk Magazine voted it your sexiest body part?” The camera shakes and shivers, indicative of Jack’s wild gesticulating as he gets heated up before it vaguely finds his face again. “Just the left one, though, not the right, which I personally found wildly offensive.”

“That’s not true,” Niall says, but not with all of the confidence he should. It sounds like the kind of thing that would and probably has happened to him.

“Actually, Niall, as an ardent subscriber and contributor to Girl Talk Magazine, I can confirm - ”

“Shut up.” Niall snickers as he taps the water off and snatches up a towel to dry his hands. “Are you maybe a little pissed right now, darling?”

“Maybe a little bit pissed.” He tips the screen to show Niall his glass of whiskey. “Maybe a little bit lonely.”

Niall hums so Jack knows he’s listening as he moves onto rolling and clipping each of the twenty-seven bags of crisps that somehow manage to materialize over the course of the day.

“All dressed up in this fancy suit, nobody to benefit from it.”

“I’m sure plenty of people benefitted from it. Twitter’s thirsty, as the kids say these days.”

Jack takes a loud, pointed slurp of his whiskey.

“Sláinte,” Niall laughs. “How was the ceremony?”

“Good, good. Won for costumes, and one more. The ladies were stunning, as per. It was a good showing.”

“Congratulations. Sorry I couldn’t come with.”

Jack makes a dismissive noise, like he has every other time Niall’s apologized. “Nah, I’ll see you in a few, won’t I?”

“‘Course.”

Niall thinks he should be used to it by now, but a few weeks sounds like a few years to Niall’s ears, and he hasn’t even been gone from Jack a full week yet. He’s been spoiled on his break, only sharing Jack’s time and attention over Christmas with their families and with H a bit. He’s nearly forgotten what it’s like to be without; he’ll have to train that part of himself up again, strengthen it like a muscle.

It’s hard, like they thought it’d be. Niall’s not afraid of his own space, that’s all he’s ever had his whole life. But joining up his curves against Jack’s, clicking his pieces into place so they feel like a set, that’s a dangerous game. That’s what he misses on the road, or when Jack’s on location. He doesn’t need someone to complete him, but he does like it.

When Niall checks back in on Jack, he’s frowning offscreen, something distant about his look. Niall snatches up the iPad and settles at the kitchen table to put his full attention on him. “Alright?”

Jack tilts his head, squinting in deflection until he relents. “Just a bit big, this house, without you. Could use some company.”

“I could give Willie a call. I’m sure he’d love to drop by, for old time’s sake.” Niall casts about, suddenly guilty. Jack didn’t have to stay at Niall’s place, really, his plants would have been just fine waiting for the service on Tuesday.

“Not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“Could do with the pitter patter of little feet,” Jack says, and Niall hesitates, thinking, _christ, not a baby?_

“Four little feet,” Jack adds, and Niall starts to sweat, thinking, _christ, not two babies_.

“Whining at the door to be let out for a wee, even though it’s three inches deep in snow outside,” Jack continues, and Niall rolls his eyes. A dog, he should have known better. He’s shameless, Jack is.

“Cuddling up with me in bed, seeing’s how you won’t.”

“No dogs in bed,” Niall argues, “I’ve read that’s a bad habit.”

Jack’s eyebrows climb high, something mischievous in his look that has Niall bracing for him to start crowing before he actually does. “You’ve been reading up, have you?”

“Not - specifically. It’s just. There are words out there, in the world, about dogs. I absorb them from time to ti - I’m not getting a dog,” Niall says firmly.

“I’m lonely, Niall. I need a man’s best friend.”

“That’s Rothney, innit. He’s not even measuring up to a dog? I’ll tell him you said that.”

“He’s on my side, don’t bother.”

Niall drags a tired hand over his face. “And when you’re here for the Oscars and off to Vancouver for filming and the like, that’s three months of us away from home, what are you going to do with the dog then?”

“Miss them dearly,” Jack says around a yawn, then disappears from view, his phone set down on the couch and displaying Niall’s high ceilings.

Niall waits, patiently, then impatiently, straining to hear anything from Jack’s end. He shouts down the line a few times before Jack’s face appears back at the camera, shadowed and upside down.

“You forget about me?”

“Never,” Jack says fervently. “Had to wash my glass. Going to bed now. Taking you with me.”

Niall settles back in his chair, watching the deep navy of Jack’s coat because that’s all Niall can see of him on the journey to the bedroom.

“Alright, then, give us a show,” Niall says when Jack clicks on a lamp for a bit of mood lighting. “I’ll take all the benefits. Show me what I’ve paid for.”

Jack grins at him, lascivious, then sets up the phone for the show.

There’s nothing wrong with a little outfit repeating, if anyone asked Niall. Jack looks fantastic in his anniversary present - trim, well tailored, which is what Niall asked for, and extremely fuckable, which Niall didn’t explicitly ask for, but was happy to receive nonetheless.

Jack peels away part of his shirt, letting it slide slowly down his arm until his shoulder is exposed. “A little bare shoulder for your evening.”

“Mm, it’s really working for me,” Niall says, going for exaggeration but it doesn’t even have the courtesy of being a lie. He thumbs at his stomach, light little traces because he’s not really sure if they’re going to _go there_ when they haven’t really before.

Jack sings a lyricless tune as he strips, something soft and sexy, maybe a little vaudevillesque. From time to time, he checks in on Niall, his dark eyes flicking over to the screen when Niall hums appreciatively.

He’s left in a pair of grey pants Niall is intimately familiar with - less in a sexy way and more in a _they might be mine, at this point with the washing all a mess, who knows_ kind of way. Niall trails his eyes down those long, long legs he can’t run his hands down, and then stops, for a moment, when he realizes what’s waiting below.

He won’t be able to see the pile of clothing on the floor if he tips forward, he knows that, but he finds himself leaning in anyway, his lips pressing tight as he pictures the wrinkles.

Jack looks directly into the camera, his eyes alight with amusement. “You want me to hang this suit up, don’t you.”

“No,” Niall lies. It’s just a nice suit is all, it’d be a shame to leave it crumpled up.

Jack makes a to-do out of bending over, stretching and posing with each of the pieces as he collects them from the floor. Niall chuckles at him as he switches back over to his phone and curls in closer.

Jack’s face gets up close and personal, his nostrils becoming the star of the show. “Is that better?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s quite alright, I’m well acquainted with your brand of foreplay.”

“Foreplay,” Niall says, straddling both a question and a statement because he can’t quite bring himself to admit that he wouldn’t mind if it was.

They’ve not done this before, mostly because it’s always seemed to Niall a little ludicrous, how performative it seems like it would be, how unnatural. He’s no stranger to a quick wank once they’ve hung up, Jack’s voice still echoing in his ear, his breath going heavy like the phantom weight of Jack’s body is on him. But this feels altogether different.

Jack makes the simple offer for him, because that’s what Niall wants him to do. “If you like.”

And Niall does like.

“Yeah... I - yeah. Hang on.” Niall moves out of the kitchen, settles onto his couch because the bedroom’s too far away, while Jack eases himself onto his side of the bed.

Niall’s never needed much more than his hand, six minutes, and a can-do attitude, but if he’s got Jack here, he figures he might as well make a meal of it.

He fingers trail lightly around the inside of his thighs and between, teasing over his shorts. He could try to pretend he hasn’t started to get hard over just the strip tease, but Niall’s not in the habit of lying to himself.

“Dicks or faces?” Jack asks, quietly enough it’s almost to himself, like he’s puzzling out loud the logistics of phone sex as though it matters and not as though they’re both likely to shoot off in an embarrassingly short amount of time either way.

“Faces,” Jack says, just as Niall decides, “Dicks.”

“Offense,” Jack crows, his face scrunching up. “Wild offense. Utter heartbreaking betrayal.”

“It’s what we’re after, innit, show isn’t over.” Niall shifts his hips to tug his shorts and pants down one handed, but keeps the camera trained on his face, serves Jack right. “I’ll settle for your mug though.”

“Oh, thanks very much,” Jack says lightly, like Niall’s doing him a favor.

And then, just like that, they’re wanking together, silently but for their labored breathing. They watch each other, trapped in some sort of game of chicken, maybe each willing the other to start talking first so the other knows how to fall in line. Not that they have the quiet, under the covers, lights off kind of sex. They’re no strangers to talking utter shit throughout, checking in, seeing what works and what doesn’t - but they won’t be able to feel the breath and heat of the other as they say the words tonight, and it seems to be knocking them off kilter.

“Fingers,” Jack finally says, which Niall answers with a whispered _yeah_ even if he wasn’t looking for permission. It means Jack has to roll over to Niall’s side of the bed, because that’s where they keep the lube, and it provokes a funny twitch in Niall’s chest.

His hand slows to a stop as he tries to sort out that feeling, eyes unfocused as Jack’s camera hops and wiggles until Jack’s situated again onto his back.

He names it just when he can tell Jack’s stopped teasing himself and slips a finger carefully in. Jack’s inhaling and exhaling carefully, eyes trained carefully on Niall’s flushed face when Niall says, “I like seeing you in my bed.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. In my bed. At my table. On my couch.”

Jack’s eyes flutter shut and his head tilts to the side. “Love being here. With you.”

“Have done, since the first time, love having you in my house.”

“Tell me,” Jack says, breathless on the other end, the camera skewing more towards the pillow than Jack’s face with the effort, but Niall’s not going to call him on it.

“D’you remember, that first night you came over?”

“Yeah, we, mm, we sat on your big fucking sofa.”

“Two - two fingers, yeah?” Niall prompts and waits for Jack to tell him _yeah_ and to tell him _fuck_ and to tell him _good I’m good_ before Niall rewards him with more. There’s a satisfying kind of symmetry to Jack opening himself up as Niall talks about opening up for Jack.

“Thought I was gonna throw a leg over and ride you right there while the game was on.”

Jack laughs, a quick delighted exhale, as he rights the camera to give Niall a cheeky look. “Having a ride while watching the game, you’d have loved that.”

Niall shakes his head, his mind snagged on the vision of Jack’s gaze on him, heavy-lidded but somehow just as fierce whenever Niall rides him. “I’d have watched you.”

“I’d have loved that,” Jack says, too sincerely for the occasion. Or maybe just sincere enough, as it has Niall breaking off his stream of nonsense to stroke faster, twist his wrist, pull out all his little tricks.

It’s absurd, but thankfully absolutely nobody will ever know that Niall’s just going to get off to chatting shit and nothing sexy about it but the sound of Jack’s voice and the hitch of Jack’s breath.

“You close?”

Niall nods at him.

“Alright, show me.”

Niall grins, having finally proved his point. He thumbs at the button to swap his camera around and refocuses, giving Jack and eyeful of himself spread out, one leg bent where his foot his braced on the cushion as his hips thrust gently through his fist’s tight grip.

He watches Jack watch him, the deep focus of his eyes fixed just off-center, no longer trying to catch his eyes. From Niall’s limited view, it looks like Jack’s slowing to a stop with his fingers pressed deep within him.

It’s a hard swallow or two before Jack says, “We never shag on that sofa. You’re all talk, and I’ve been waiting years.”

“Yeah ‘cause it’d be a bitch to steam the stains out,” Niall pants, ignoring the fact that they haven’t quite known each other for years in favor of grinning at the answering hitch in Jack’s breath. “And you only wanna shag there just before someone comes ‘round.”

“I look good when you put a bit of color in my cheeks.”

It’s irritating - and also very satisfying - that that’s what does it for Niall, has him coming over his fist with a strangled sound. Jack does look his best then, slick lipped and red faced and utterly pleased.

There’s quiet after, Niall trapped in a lonely afterglow with just his desperate breaths to keep him company, Jack’s slack face so still on the screen Niall thinks the screen might have frozen.

He turns the camera back toward his face. “You?”

Jack’s jaw works before his mouth does, looking up at Niall with something like a plea. “Need both hands.”

“That’s alright, babe.”

Niall watches his own speckled ceiling, rising and falling as though it were a choppy tide at the unsteady movement of Jack’s chest. It can’t be more than a few tugs on Jack’s end before a truly beautiful and truly embarrassing strangled groan works its way through the speakers on Niall’s phone, chased quickly by a number of choice curse words and, gloriously, Niall’s name.

He loves the way Jack comes apart, wishes he could have been the architect of it, gotten his hands dirty, so to say. But, for now, this will have to do.

Niall’s wondering exactly how much pillowtalk might be expected when Jack says sharply, “Ah fuck.”

Niall sits up. “What is it?”

“I think. I got some. On,” Jack says, distracted, before his face comes back. “My phone. Listen, I love you very dearly, Niall.”

Niall waves him off. “I love you, please clean up.”

Jack grins at him, eyes roving the screen like he’s taking his fill, topping off the tank, and Niall tries his best to give him a good picture. Then Jack nods, like he’s got what he needed, and sighs, “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Yeah,” Niall says. A few weeks can count as a bit for them, in their own special dialect. “In a bit.”

\--

_3\. September 2019_

“Now where’d you say you were headed again?” Bobby asks from his recliner in front of the telly, eyes trained on the episode of Ros na Rún he’d recorded from the night before. He prefers to watch live, but he made a rare exception so Jack and Niall could take him out for steak and whiskey last night. Niall’s not actually sure if it was the whiskey or the Jack that had managed to tip the scales for Bobby in the end.

“The Mullaghmeen White Walk - it’s a forest, no real hills to speak of,” Jack replies, stroking Hank’s ears tenderly. Hank lets out a contented sigh and stretches out his front legs where they’re draped over Jack’s lap.

“How long is that, about?”

“Less than ten kilometers,” Niall answers. He still has the page for the trail up on his phone. “Largest beech forest in Ireland, but it shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

Bobby makes a soft tutting noise.

“Ahh, I don’t know, lad. Hank likes his bed more than anything lately. Think his hips have been bothering him. Eyes aren’t so good now either.”

Bobby is the undisputed master of the understatement, and Niall takes this admission as Bobby most likely intends it.

Niall watches Jack’s face as he does the same, his forehead creasing in concern, his mouth going tight. He’s staring at Hank’s back legs like he can cure them through sheer force of will and Niall feels an embarrassing constriction in the back of his throat.

“Well that’s alright then,” he forces out, affecting a breezy disregard. “Hank can stick around here and watch your stories with you.”

Bobby scoffs good naturedly, and Niall gives Jack’s knee a quick squeeze as he uses it to push himself up off the sofa.

“Gonna go get my boots on,” he says, leaning back down to press a kiss to Jack’s furrowed brow.

Jack’s still stroking a finger meditatively down the center of Hank’s greying head as he slowly nods his acknowledgement.

He’s quiet on the drive out to the forest, no singing, no hand in Niall’s lap, and Niall knows he’s brooding over Hank. The bad hips, the cataracts clouding his eyes, the way he could barely get himself off the sofa to greet them when they arrived at Bobby’s yesterday. Jack loves that damn dog and now he’s probably dying and Niall’s first instinct is, irrationally, to be mad at poor Hank for breaking Jack’s heart.

There’s a fine mist going as they park at the trailhead and climb out of the car, and it feels fitting. Jack shoulders the pack with their water bottles in it and pulls the hood of his jacket over his head, hiding his face from Niall.

It’s unusual for Jack to be morose like this, and it hurts Niall almost physically, like gravel under his ribs. He searches desperately for the right thing to say to make Jack laugh, to make him feel a little better, but all he can come up with is _I’m sorry_.

Jack looks up from where he’s fiddling with his zipper, quizzical.

“About rain in Ireland? I wouldn’t expect even you could control that.”

He attempts a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“No– I mean. You know, about Hank.”

Jack’s mouth goes tight again and he nods.

“Bobby say anything else about it to you? How long d’you think he’s got?”

“He didn’t, but if he’s even mentioning anything at all, then…” Niall swipes a hand across his mouth. “You know how he is.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighs, his shoulders collapsing inward. “Poor old Hank. Bobby did a good thing, taking him in like he did.”

Niall rubs at his chin thoughtfully. He really hadn’t understood what Bobby was thinking when he brought Hank home a couple years back. He was already old when Bobby found him, and starved half to death as it was. Niall always wondered why he’d put himself through all that, falling in love with a dog that wouldn’t last but a few more years at best.

"I just don't get it," Niall says, shaking his head. "He signed himself for absolute misery."

Jack squints at Niall and adjusts the pack on his shoulders.

"I think you're missing the point a bit, love."

Niall falls into step beside Jack as they start down the trail into the forest, so lush and green it almost feels fake.

"How do you mean?"

"It's not like he set out one day to find an old dog to take care of - it just happened. Hank needed your da, and he has a good life because of him. There's a satisfaction just in that, even if it can't last forever. I'd love to be able to do that someday, to give a dog a good life. The world’s such shite, sometimes. It’s nice, you know, if you can make it a little better for someone.”

For a moment, the gravel crunching under their feet the only thing breaking the silence. Niall’s still in awe, sometimes, at how easily Jack expresses himself, how quickly he can find the right words to tell Niall exactly how he feels. There’s a treacherous heat behind Niall’s eyes and he has to swallow hard before he can respond.

“I get it, I just… I hate seeing him sad, seeing him upset. Hate seeing you sad too. And the fact is, Hank’s not gonna be around forever and it’s gonna be awful and I just… I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder why people put themselves through all that.”

Jack knocks his shoulder into Niall’s companionably.

“We’re tough, we’ll get through it.”

“I know, I know… I just like you happy.”

Jack pulls Niall in by the waist and plants a kiss on the top of his head. Niall darts a quick glance around, but it’s just the two of them alone with the trees.

“You know what would make me _really_ happy?”

“I’m not gonna blow you out here,” Niall responds flatly.

“Right. I was talking about us getting a dog… But if it’s on offer–”

“It’s not,” Niall says immediately, biting back a grin.

“So a dog then?” Jack says hopefully.

Niall cringes and Jack just laughs, full throated.

Niall wants to tell him there’s nothing in the world stopping Jack from getting a dog, grown and autonomous man that he is. But the stronger, smarter, better reasoned part of Niall tells himself Jack’s right to run it by him, because it’s not just a decision that affects Jack.

Somehow it’s tilted from _you should get a dog_ to _we should get a dog_ and that imperceptible shift still somehow manages to throw Niall off balance. They’re inextricably tied now, a choice made by one affecting the other because that’s what you do when you’re sharing a life.

He wants to see Jack happy, more than anything, and he knows that a dog’s going to do the trick. Only the stronger, smarter, selfishly reasoned part of Niall tells himself there are too many barriers ahead of him to make a clean leap on this one.

Jack reads Niall’s face wrong, or maybe right, and relents, “Alright, alright. Not yet.”

Niall looks around one last time before sliding his hand around the back of Jack’s neck, rubbing his fingers against the grain of his close-cropped hair and pulling his face down to his own.

“Not yet,” he whispers against Jack’s lips.

\--

_4\. June 2020_

Niall’s ordinarily on his very best behavior during a venue tour, nodding seriously when the venue manager shows him around, makes careful notes of places he’ll want to come back to later with the lads, makes careful notes of places he’ll be exposed and cause some kind of trouble for security. Niall has a process, perfected over nearly a decade, and that process flew straight out the window the moment Niall left the plane.

He keeps pulling his phone out, checking for a message like he doesn’t know exactly when the plane’s meant to land, like maybe Jack’s changed his mind and just this once is going to splurge on the in flight WiFi. But each time, there’s no message, and Niall reminds himself to be patient.

He could tell maybe Jack wanted it to be a surprise, but he knows Niall’s not great with surprises, especially not on tour. Jack knows there’s logistics and security and about 40,000 people with phones, half of whom are on high alert for Jack’s presence by now, even if they don’t quite know what it means yet.

Niall wonders if maybe the romance is a little stale, if Jack can’t whisk him away at a moment’s notice, but instead has to check with three different people who run three different diaries. But truly, it was the only way.

Once Jack arrives, he’s got exactly 39 hours in Montreal to make the best of it until they’re off again, Jack back to set in London and Niall down to Boston where he’ll jump back on the bus with the rest of the lads.

“Right, Niall?” his tour manager prompts, exasperation curving the edges of his lips down.

Niall pockets his phone, guilty, and refocuses his attention.

He almost misses the buzz when it comes.

_No champagne? No limo? Disappointed._

Niall laughs and sends back, _budget tour mate .._ And after that it’s pretty much game over for productivity as he traces the path out to the back door where the car will drop him off.

As spring leans into summer slowly, the light breeze cuts through the sunshine. Niall misses his amphitheatres, and thinks that maybe bigger isn’t always better, and maybe arenas are more of an echo chamber than he wants, full to the brim with people who are here to see him because his of name and not because of his music.

The thought latches in his mind, with the kind of kind of festering tinge to it that makes the _you should tell Jack_ warning go off. He should tell Jack and he shouldn’t cushion it either with a laugh or a shrug to make it seem less than what it is.

It’s a battle against the part of him that says Jack’s not going to be able to help realistically - he can’t go poll the audience to discern their intentions, he can’t erase nearly a decade of the machines that made him just as much of a personality as a musician.

That’s not what Jack’s there for, he has to remind himself. He’s there to be an ear, a comfort, and it’s okay that Niall needs that. And he’s also there to tell Niall to get his head out of his arse.

 _You better hurry up_ , Niall sends him, as if Jack has any control over the matter. But somehow Jack manifests himself minutes later, the car Niall insisted on sending for him rounding into the private rear access area to come to a stop before Niall.

Jack unfolds himself from the car with a pair of sunglasses and a grin on his face. “Bonjour,” he announces, the first thing Niall’s heard from his actual mouth in actual months, because Jack’s an idiot.

It doesn’t matter if anyone’s around, if anyone’s looking, Niall’s not in the mood to be careful - he just falls into Jack. It’s like he can exhale for the first time in months, oddly, squeezing himself around Jack’s torso.

“Alright, love?” Jack murmurs, his lips pressing firmly against the top of Niall’s head, subtle enough that no one might notice even if they were looking.

“Am now,” Niall says into his neck.

He’s in just in time for proper soundcheck before the polished one for the audience later, so Niall connects up with his tour manager and lets himself be routed to the stage, even if he does remember the way on his own.

Inside the halls of the arena, Jack looks perfectly at home, his bag hooked over one shoulder and a VIP lanyard slapping at his chest as he walks. Niall likes to see Jack in Niall’s element, to fit his little puzzle piece in with the rest that make up Niall’s life and take a step back to see the whole picture with clarity.

All the lights are up in Bell Center, blinding like direct sunlight for everyone fussing with the floor seats and running brooms and striding around with purpose, barking into radios. The whole production never fails to astound Niall, even though he’s long since stopped demurring, _all this for little old me?_

Jack sits himself in the third row once he’s liberated from dropping his bag off at Niall’s dressing room, his feet kicked up onto the seat in front of him. His foot’s tapping along gently to this song, which sounds like Jack even if it isn’t directly about him. He’s still got his sunglasses on, but Niall knows Jack’s looking at him.

Niall asks for a little more from Jake and a little less from Bird into the mic, nodding when the levels sound better, and then they’re off.

Niall likes his whole picture, he likes it a whole fucking lot.

Backstage, Jack falls in easy with the rest of the lads, warm handshakes and how’re ya’s and how’s your ma’s, letting them goad him into cracking open an early afternoon beer or two. Niall knows what they’re after, trying to live vicariously through Jack while the rest of them are on a one-beer limit, 3 pm curfew implemented to allow themselves full license to be off their faces the moment the roadies start packing up.

Niall spent the better part of last year living in Jack’s world, when he wasn’t living out of a studio trying to crank out this album like he hadn’t something to prove. Niall’s been used to the easy, absent way his hand always found a way to drift over someplace on Jack’s body, or turning to say something to him to find his face open and waiting for whatever it is.

This year, it’s been like it was at the start, conversations stopped and started and stopped again before they were finished, lost and found to different time zones and diaries. It creeps sometimes back into what Niall’s feared, a relationship with his phone, a facsimile of intimacy made up of pixels on an admittedly very high definition screen.

It’s been hard, but Niall’s job has always been hard, every inch of it, even if it is touched by a magic Niall will never understand and will never be able to repay. And now he’s had the taste of being able to tell someone, _I didn’t like it today_ , unapologetically and without any consequence, or _I didn’t do my best today_ , without feeling like he’s somehow orchestrated the loss of a million pounds in revenue - like he’s never been able to have before, not even to Harry, not even to Louis. Now he’s had the taste of the ease Jack specifically grants him, Niall can’t give that up.

Niall snatches up what’s left of Jack’s beer - not much - and finishes it before he says something stupid in front of everyone like, _I like all the places you fit_. He hands Jack back the can, slipping into one of his more ridiculous American accents to say, “Crush it, bruh.”

“Chyeah, c’mon,” Conor pipes up from the corner and presses an empty beer can to his forehead to illustrate. It doesn’t do much more than bend on one side and probably threaten to give him a nasty headache, but Niall’s still cackling and shouting, “That’s so sick, Tucker.”

“ _Tucker_ , is it?” Jack asks.

Niall grins, curiosity peaked at the way Jack’s smile is flat, not curved, which means he doesn’t quite mean it.

To raucous applause and cheering, Jack fully crushes a beer can against his fucking forehead and tosses it over his shoulder. “We don’t fuck around in drama school,” he announces, and it’s simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to Niall.

Jack leans in close, lips to Niall’s ear to say, “I must say I have been waiting for you to trot out the roleplay back home.”

Niall flinches away from him, making a face. “Shut up.”

“I’m disappointed you don’t think I can handle it. I’ll have you know, I’m classically trained.”

Niall looks right at him and thinks he should be kissed right now, it’s a matter of urgency, practically an international emergency, but he lets the urge slip away in favor of whispering back, “You shag me just fine as yourself.”

“No arguments there.” Jack dusts his shoulder off with a silly little look on his face.

Niall fishes about for something to tweet about the last time he’s come to Montreal while the rest of them are commiserating about the long waits, hours sitting around doing fuck all waiting for something to happen. Jack’s waxing poetic about the beauty and immediacy of theatre, calling film a waiting man’s game.

Niall’s about to object - he’s made sure their tour manager had provisions enough, footballs and nets and table tennis and four controllers for the Playstation - when he hears it, what he’d been hoping wouldn’t come up.

Niall groans, his hand slapping at his face and dragging down with impatience. “Don’t - don’t you encourage him.”

“A _tour dog_ , eh?” Jack says nonetheless, loudly, turning wide, interested eyes over to the boys.

“Christ, I’m getting it from all sides,” Niall grouses.

That’ll just be one step closer to Jack winning the argument. When Jack’s off on location, it’s fine, Niall will just take the dog with him. Only he won’t have time to look after the dog all the time, so he’ll have to pay someone to mind the dog for him. Only that’s not entirely fair for the dog, and enough people are paid to mind Niall himself. And sometimes, when it’s quiet and dark and the bad bits of this business sink in, Niall remembers things.

He remembers things like Lou taking his hands, her eyes tired and sad, and saying, “Promise me you’ll never raise a kid on the road.” And Niall had promised, to never raise a kid at all, not that he’d said all that, but in any case he’d meant it. He’s no good for it.

The last time they’d discussed this, Niall had said _not yet_ , and he doesn’t know how or if he wants to say, _maybe not ever_.

“We’re not getting a dog,” Niall says at least six times, to absolutely nobody listening, because Jack’s got them on some sort of tangent about the grave importance of emotional support.

“You’re my emotional support animal,” Niall says and flicks him in the ear. Jack squints over at him, offended, though Niall’s not sure over what specifically. “I’ve got to go now. Meet dozens of adoring fans. Who care about things I say.”

“Should I go with you and ask them? I bet they’ll be on my side. _Omg, Niall and dogs, I ship it_.”

Niall shudders. “Don’t say shit like that.”

Jack’s got that look on his face though like he might stir some shit, even though he very specifically knows better, has had years and years with which to know better.

Luckily Niall’s saved by Cameron at the door, who actually does announce that it’s time for Meet and Greets, of course it is, Niall is the master of all scheduling and knew that. Niall’s trailing her out the door before he realizes Jack’s hot on his heels. “You can’t come with me, babe.”

“I know, hang on.” Jack opens the next door they come across, finding an office with three women in who look blandly over at the intrusion. “Ehm, sorry about that.”

Niall chuckles at him, tugging at his waist until he swiftly closes the door. “Just a minute?” he asks Cameron, who does a quick internal calculation before she decides, “Honestly, one exact minute.”

They fall into a private bathroom - an ugly cliche, but neither of them lock the door behind them, out of respect to their one exact minute.

Jack’s warm, steady hand against Niall’s face is his favorite kind of harbinger, and Niall’s leaning up to kiss Jack before Jack has the opportunity to do so himself. Niall moves to mirror him, hand on Jack’s bare cheek, missing the beard but not the burn as he kisses him like it’s muscle memory. _This is right, this is real, this is it,_ Niall tells himself.

“Hey,” Jack says. He smells like craft beer and Niall’s Do Son shower gel and travel sweat and Niall knows he means to take a shower before doors, but Niall, for one unhinged moment, wants to tell him to leave off so he can drown himself in this exact scent once he’s offstage.

“Hey,” Niall answers instead.

“Hadn’t kissed you yet.”

“Sop.”

Jack grins, shameless. “Yep.”

“I really needed this,” Niall admits, and it feels too heavy for less than a minute, for a single stall bathroom, for everything Niall hasn’t been able to say over the phone but Jack’s heard anyway. “And you.”

“Me too.” Jack’s looking at him closely, seriously, in that x-ray sort of way he has. “I think maybe I took last year for granted.”

Niall sat on his bed when Jack asked him and he knew it was going to be work. He’d weighed it all and measured it all and then tossed the scales out. And it’s fine. Just this once, Niall called and Jack came running because he could. Running’s part of the work, staying home is part of the work, pixels on screens are part of the work.

Niall nods half-heartedly, a decision made. “It was alright.”

“Alright?”

“Only meant to get better, innit?”

Jack hums. “Better,” he agrees, pressing a brief kiss to Niall’s lips. “And better and better and better.”

\--

_5\. September 2020_

It’s house number seventeen, and if Niall weren’t so fucking particular about everything, he’d have bought the first one and been done with it. But he’s grown out of investment properties and grown into _think about where you want to live the next twenty years_ properties, in London at least.

He’s not been the type to put down roots, to settle in so thoroughly they’d need some sort of crane to dig him up and oust him - or however it is they get rid of very old, stubborn trees. He’s not a vagabond anymore, he’s a stubborn old tree.

“I’m a stubborn old tree,” Niall tells Jack as they walk up the drive slowly, eyes trailing up and down the facade.

Jack nods absently, clearly not listening, and says, “Right you are.”

His realtor, a long-suffering but somehow endlessly upbeat lady named Pamela, unlocks the door and chatters away about crown molding right off. Niall tunes her out just as Jack does, which isn’t very fair to her, but you’ve heard one speech about crown molding, you’ve really heard them all.

There’s something like a shadow over the proceedings, darker than the grey skies outside that promise a stormfront coming. Niall thinks no one should tour a house on a grey day or they’ll get grey results, but this is more than that. His heart’s not in it, not like it was when he’d made the grand announcement that he was moving, and everything’s felt muted since.

The walk through the house feels obligatory, each room blocked off from the other like an old Victorian style house. It feels very closed in, near claustrophobic, but he’d promise he’d give them all a fair shake because you can never judge a house by its pictures.

He tries to picture Jack in the kitchen, peeling potatoes at the counter. He tries to picture Jack putting ornaments up on the Christmas tree in the corner, finally having won the battle for a real one this year. He tries to picture Jack’s soapy hair popped up over the glazed door in the shower because he’s taller than it.  

But Niall doesn’t see him anywhere in his house.

Jack’s full of opinions, spouts them like pieces of wisdom meant to be written down, but he’s been quiet all morning. He’d been quiet yesterday too, not quite snippy but still short. Niall goes to find him anyway, where he’s stood at the door to the back yard - solid wood, a lamentably small window, Niall prefers far more natural light in his house.

“What d’you think?”

Jack doesn’t even turn to look at him. “It’s a no from me.”

“Why’s that?” Niall asks, figuring it’s probably a reason he can bear voicing aloud to Pamela because he doesn’t quite imagine _my boyfriend doesn’t look good here_ will go over too well.

“You’ll need a bigger yard.”

Niall grinds his teeth, keeping his mouth firmly pressed shut until he takes three breaths first. He’s let the comment pass for the last sixteen houses, but this one he holds onto. “For what?”

“All your garden parties,” Jack says lightly, then disappears around the corner, maybe into the kitchen, maybe into the giant walk-in pantry, Niall can’t even be sure.

This place is too labyrinthine to ever be Niall’s, he’s known it since he’s seen the floorplan, but there’s something directly interesting about asking Pamela to float an offer by the seller out of spite to Jack.

Niall trails after him, eyes cutting back and forth for Pamela, but she’s good about giving them privacy. Jack’s not in the kitchen or the pantry, he’s in what seems like a sitting room, fiddling with a light dimmer, up and down and up and down.

“Hey, what’s your problem?”

Jack’s hand leaves the dimmer at half, a greyed out setting for a grey day. “Nothing.”

“Is it about the fucking dog?”

“No,” Jack says, and it almost sounds to Niall like he means it.

Niall knows he’s been fending him off for... _years_ now, it has to be, and he doesn’t know how long they’re going to keep playing this game. The facts keep lining up on Niall’s side, whenever he runs them.

It’s the next step - it’s a huge step. It ties them together in a way Niall’s never allowed himself to be tied together. Because it’s still never _Jack_ should get a dog, it’s _we_ should get a dog. And he thinks of Louis and of Liam and of the dogs they’ve lost along the way - because it would be Niall who loses the dog, when Niall’s not particularly bothered by a dog in the first place, but also when it’s Niall who couldn’t bear to live out his days with a living reminder of Jack if, god forbid, Niall ever fucks this up.

It’s not dedicated drawers or racks in the closets or a toothbrush and aftershave on the counter or stacks of scripts on the kitchen table - things that can be cleaned, removed, trashed, bought again, whatever else. A dog is a living thing, a _dying_ thing like Hank who they buried earlier this year, and Niall would owe it some space in his heart that he can’t reasonably part with.

Niall pinches his nose, his eyes scrunching shut in frustration. “We’re not getting a dog, we don’t even _live together_.”

When Niall looks over at him again, Jack’s standing up at his full height, his face tense, defensive. “So what?”

“So move in with me,” Niall snaps.

“Okay, _fine_.”

The tension slowly melts from their faces as matching grins take shape. Niall slaps at the wall switch until all the lights are on, and the shadow around them dissipates in an instant.

It isn’t the dog that he wants to lock himself into - it’s Jack. He pictures Jack in his house, because it’s also Jack’s house, because he’s the sure thing, the living, breathing thing Niall has given his heart to.

Niall pushes him into the wall and brackets himself over Jack, and Jack’s easy for his kiss, though he’s grinning too much for the thorough snog Niall’s after. He rests his head against Jack’s shoulder, his hand smoothing gently up and down Jack’s chest.

“If anyone asks, this isn’t how this happened. We’ll need to come up with something more romantic.”

Jack hums. “He got down on one knee and presented me with a rental agreement.”

“I’m putting your name on the mortgage. Nothing says romance like shared debt.”

Jack laughs, his chest jumping with the force of it against Niall’s hand.

Pamela makes a noise on the other side of the room, announcing herself so they’ll turn toward her.

“Good news?” she asks, her shoulders shimmying in delighted anticipation already.

“We hate it,” Niall answers cheerfully. Pamela looks crestfallen, so Niall quickly follows up. “But we haven’t given up the hunt yet.”

They’ve had enough for the day, parting ways with Pamela at the drive, to head back home. To Niall’s home, that is.

It’s not as though they don’t spend time over at Jack’s, Niall thinks as he strips off his shirt and tosses it into the hamper. It’s a nice flat, and they get enough privacy from his flatmate when they need it. Niall’s not so much of a diva to demand they’re always at his own.

But they _are_ almost always at his own. Niall’s living room has made it onto Jack’s instagram with the coveted caption _Hame_. Niall expects Jack to stay there while he’s away, he expects Jack to be there when he gets back. He lets Jack play at handyman until he calls a real handyman and he has Jack hang photographs where Jack thinks they’ll look nice and he lets Jack do the big shop even though Jack always buys the kind of onions Niall hates, like he doesn’t realize there are multiple kinds of onions in the world.

Niall has to rifle through three pairs of Jack’s sleep pants before he even finds a pair of his own to slip on for a typical round of pajamas and drinks at two in the afternoon. And that’s when it becomes clear.

Leaned against the kitchen counter, Jack’s reading the newspaper Niall has delivered here for him, to Niall’s own doorstep, because Jack won’t hit the highlights on the iPad. Niall’s got him a subscription to a paper Niall doesn’t even read, delivered to Niall’s own house.

“You already live here,” Niall announces. “We already live together.”

Jack carefully folds and sets down the newspaper and turns to pour them each a finger of whiskey neat. The way he patiently says, “I know,” makes Niall want to deck him a little.

“I was parading you around all these fucking houses and I didn’t tell you they were going to be yours.”

Jack hums an affirmative. “It was very rude. Like dangling a piece of meat in front of me and then yanking it away when I get too close.”

“Am I the meat, or is the house the meat?”

“You’re always the meat,” Jack says, pressing in close for a cheeky grope that has Niall laughing, but not twitching away because Jack’s arm moves gently to curl around his waist to lock him in.

Jack’s free hand grants him a glass of whiskey. “To our new home.”

Niall hums. “Wherever that may be.”

They clink their glasses together prior to taking quick pulls. It’s smooth all the way down, warmth following and spreading. It’s a worthy celebration.

“I never wanted you to do something you weren’t comfortable with.”

“I’m comfortable,” Niall assures him. “I’ve been so fucking comfortable. Maybe that’s been the problem.”

“The status quo.”

“Yeah.”

It’s been a bit of that, a bit of taking this all for granted. Expecting Jack to fill up all the spaces Niall’s left for him, but Niall needs to let Jack leave space for his own. It’s a give and take, isn’t it. Because it’s not just been Niall fitting Jack into his life, it’s also been Jack fitting Niall into his own.

Niall looks up at him.

“D’you wanna move in the rest of your stuff here while we look? I can have someone out to pack them all up tomorrow. I can have someone pack them all up today. Should they pack them up right now? I think the answer’s yes.”

“Nah,” Jack says. “Think it might be a good time for another cleanse. Out with the old.”

“Not too much, though,” Niall says before he thinks better of it, but he still means it. There’s enough of Jack’s stuff around that he’s got a presence in Niall’s current house, but he’s not after a flatmate who happens to share his bed. If they’re going to start fresh, they’re going to do it proper.

“You should bring your things, put them up with mine. Bring some lamp that I absolutely hate for that corner over there.”

“I will.”

“Good. Yeah, good.” Niall tips his head up to accept a whiskey-sweet kiss, then another. “I want to make a home with you.”

“We will,” Jack promises.

Niall’s phone buzzes on the counter, and Jack frees him to go fuss with whiskey refills. It’s an email from Pamela, a hesitant note about it being not quite what Niall’s asked for, with a link attached to another prospective house. He clicks it - he said he’d given them all a fair shake.

The flicks through the photos quickly, noting the stripped walls and frames, the sinks that need replacing, the overgrown yard out back, the mess of a hole in the hardwood floors like something out of _Home Alone 2_. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home right now, not even close to something Niall would be comfortable walking into, and that thought, that potential sits heavy in Niall’s chest.

It’s not anyone’s home, but they could make it theirs.

“D’you want to go see a house tomorrow as well?”

“How’s the yard?”

“Big,” Niall allows, rolling his eyes at Jack’s first priority.

“And the rest?”

“Absolute shit, completely unliveable,” Niall says. “It’s a fixer upper.”

Jack looks up at him from his whiskey, an intense, measuring look on his face, and Niall knows what he’s going to find there. He meets Niall’s excitement and says, “I’ve never been afraid of a little work.”

\--

_6\. March 2021_

The lights are dim and the brass slurring through _The Last Dance_ because it is the last dance and Niall’s tie is loosened and he’s slumped on a barstool and he’s cradling a half an hour old glass of _whiskey_ \- not whisky - that he doesn’t have it in him to finish. He’d be the picture of Sinatra if not for the anachronistic phone in his hand, treating him to a wikipedia wormhole while Jack does whatever else is lingering of his best man duties.

Someone slides onto the stool next to him, leans in close to say, “Come here often?”

“Genuinely never.” Niall turns his whole body toward Jack like a flower chasing the sun. “Hey, did you know whiskey is from the translation for _water of life_?”

“I did not.”

“It’s the same in Irish and Scottish.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“It is. The more you know.” Niall waves a hand in front of Jack’s face, mimicking an explosion. He wonders where that thing came from. He should add it to his Wikipedia list.

He likes the sound of it, water of life, though, in all honesty, the way it seems to mean a lot. He’s got maybe too many songs about being in his cups at this point, but there’s still something to it. Whiskey’s maybe been the water of this life he’s got now with Jack, each of them definitely better suited for beer but still sipping on whiskey trying to impress each other the first night they met.

He tries his best not to think his life’s comprised of chapters or movements - the Mullingar years, the One Direction years, and so on - but somehow Jack’s managed to plant a flag firmly right in the center of Niall’s timeline, the start of the Jack Era, and it’s a big flag, massive like the flags they fly over car dealerships in America, and he’s just there now, Jack is, and his flag, and Niall’s poured a load of cement around the base so no one can pull it back out.

He’s mixed his metaphors, like he’s mixed his liquors tonight, but the only thing that seems to make sense is him and Jack and maybe they’ve both got flags and maybe they’re next to each other or something, waving delicately in the wind. He looks up to ask Jack his opinion, but someone else has got his attention.

“You’re up here for a few more nights, yeah? What are you getting up to tomorrow?” Andy asks, pulling on his overcoat.

Jack slings an arm around Niall, where he’s leaning heavily against Jack’s side. Without Niall noticing, they’ve migrated to the front hall of the hotel, watching the final drunken stragglers file out of the reception. Niall is certainly not one of them.

Calum and Maja are already on their way to the airport, heading for their honeymoon in Paris. It’d been a lovely wedding; Calum proud and nervous in his kilt and blazer, icy, unflappable Maja surprising them all with an uncharacteristic bout of overjoyed tears at the altar. Niall liked watching it, the clear-eyed happiness of the two of them, the surety, the way they fit together for their first dance.

 _Our first dance won’t be that good,_ Niall thinks to himself. _Won’t measure up to the professional dancers, but that’s alright. We’ll be at least as happy, that’s what matters. And we’ll have just as much Laphroaig too..._

Jack interrupts Niall’s swerving train of thought before he even realized that he’s basically planning their wedding, which they’ve never had so much as a single conversation about.

“Gonna get this one out to Cockleroy Hill, if he’s up for it,” Jack replies, pulling Niall in a bit closer. He angles a doubtful look down at Niall, who laughs and buries his face in Jack’s chest, legless and feeling slightly caught-out.

“Oh, leave the boy alone,” Jack’s mom cuts in, patting Niall’s back kindly. “It’s his first Scottish wedding.”

“Thank you, Jacquie,” Niall responds dolefully. It’s not, actually. But no one needs to know that.

“It was a good one, wasn’t it?” Jack’s dad asks genially, his eyes shining. Niall’s always harbored an unspoken suspicion that Gordon slightly favors Calum.

“Aye, gorgeous,” Jack agrees easily. “I was just thinking, how lucky it is, that he ended up in Sweden - he’d have never met Maja otherwise.”

“Sweden! Of all places!” Jacquie chimes in, clasping her hands to her heart. “He’s a lucky, lucky lad.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and Niall thinks Jacquie may have had a bit too much whiskey too.

He subtly rubs his cheek against the wool of Jack’s coat. _We’re lucky too. We’re gonna do this someday, people are gonna be talking about us like this._

He’s never felt so sure about anything in his life.

“Did I hear you’re going up Cockleroy tomorrow?” Gordon asks.

Jack nods so his chin brushes against the top of Niall’s head and Niall wraps his arms around Jack, gives him a tight squeeze. It’s a bit more affectionate than he normally would be in front of Jack’s parents, but they’re all a bit sloshed and Niall feels buoyant, suffused with love.

“Could stop by and pick up Dasha in the morning if you’d like,” Gordon offers.

Andy shakes his head and flicks at Jack’s shoulder.

“You’re still borrowing Dasha? Niall, when are you going to get this poor boy a dog of his own?”

Niall opens his mouth to defend himself, but Jack beats him to it.

“Ach, lay off. It’s not Niall’s fault; we’re both so busy right now, it’s just not the right time. It wouldn’t really be fair to the pup, you know.”

He sounds like Niall, parroting back all the reasons Niall’s given Jack over the years. _Years_. All of a sudden they sound much more like excuses than genuine reasons and Niall wonders why he was ever so against it.

For once Jack’s not asking, he’s given up the fight. Niall chiseled off that little part of Jack’s heart that was full of hope for something so minor as a fucking dog.

The one time he’d tried to tell someone about the touring and all, she’d scoffed and said, _Yeah, because no musician in the history of forever has ever had a dog._

The third album’s tour will be less fervent, less desperate to fill every other day with dates like the sooner he gets to the next one, the less likely it’ll be that they forget about him, and whatever else he’s been afraid of, whatever else he’s only privately admitted to Jack and his therapist.

He’s settled now, with months-long stretches in between legs built in to just _live_. To live and to take risks and to settle and to disrupt. And to find whatever great beast Jack will inevitably fall in love with and find a way to fall in love with them too, even if it’s got an expiration date.

Just because something ends doesn’t mean the journey’s not worth taking. Just because Niall puts part of his heart into something doesn’t mean it won’t be worth the inevitable breaking. He knows this, he’s learned this however many times over.

It’s hard, but they know how to work, it’s been nothing but work from the start. He wasn’t ready then, but now. Niall tugs at Jack’s arm, whispering his name insistently.

The conversation has moved on without Niall, something about an upcoming charity bike ride Andy’s doing.

“Jack,” Niall says seriously, clumsily pulling at him. “Babe. _Jack_.”

Niall leans in until his lips are brushing against the shell of Jack’s ear once he’s certain he’s wrestled away Jack’s attention.

“We can get a dog,” he murmurs. “If you want - I want you to have what you want. We can get a dog.”

Jack pulls back slightly so he can meet Niall’s eyes.

“Oh yeah?”

He’s laughing a bit and Niall feels a surge of frustration. He holds Jack’s gaze, trying to make him understand - that Niall loves him, that he wants to marry him, that he wants to make him happy. That they’re gonna get a fucking dog.

Niall tightens his grip on Jack’s waist and says, simply, “Yeah.”

Jack smiles softly and pulls Niall back in, rubbing his hand briskly over Niall’s back.

“Alright then, I think that’s us done. Gonna head back to the cabin,” Jack says.

Niall nods serenely, feeling very pleased with himself.

The window is cool against Niall’s temple as he leans against it, watching the fine mist of rain drizzle down the windscreen. It’s only been twenty minutes since they left the hotel but he’s already feeling more sober, clear-headed. Jack hasn’t put on the wipers yet, always likes to wait till it’s “proper” raining before he does. Niall rolls his head to the side to gaze at him, the sharpness of his nose in profile, the way his mouth quirks as he sings along with Ariana Grande on the radio.

_So baby come light me up, and baby I’ll let you on it_

_A little bit dangerous, but baby that’s how I want it_

Niall’s glad they rented the little cabin at the edge of the forest instead of staying in the hotel with everyone else, if only for the chance to listen to Jack singing softly in his fake bad voice. He’s too embarrassed to sing for real, even though his voice is lovely; Niall loves catching him at it when he thinks no one’s around. The song fades into something new from Coldplay and Jack finally sees fit to start the wipers, settling his hand on Niall’s knee instead of back on the steering wheel. Niall loves the weight of it there, warm and familiar and reassuring. He places his own hand over Jack’s, rubbing his thumb at the side of Jack’s wrist.

“I was serious back there, you know. About the dog.”

Jack’s eyes dart over to Niall quickly before focusing back on the road.

“You were, were you?” he asks lightly.

“I was.”

“It’s okay if you weren’t. I know you’ve been drinking, I wasn’t gonna hold you to it.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Niall says quietly. And it’s true, he knows. Jack wouldn’t ever make him do something he didn’t want to.

“I just think… we’re there. We have this time off, finally. Let’s just do it. We can train it up and all that. We can handle it, can’t we?”

Jack turns his hand over on Niall’s knee so he can twine their fingers together, dragging Niall’s hand to his mouth and kissing his knuckles without taking his eyes off the road. He’s grinning too, softly, but still enough to bloom the pleased little wrinkles at the sides of his eyes.

“Yeah, we can handle it.”

\--

_And then..._

She’s called Carol, the little mutt Jack falls in love with literally on sight, and Niall absolutely will not have a dog named Carol.

“I won’t have a dog named Carol,” Niall tells him.

“The hell you won’t,” Jack says, although the fact that Niall can hear him at all behind the bath his face is receiving is something of a miracle.

Jack’s laid out on his back on the dusty floor of the dog’s kennel, and the dog’s dusty paws are digging deep into his jumper. She’s pure white elsewhere, pristine but for her dirty paws, the kind of dog that looks _expensive_. Niall had been half worried Jack was going to show up one day with a dog the size of Niall with enough fur to inspire an allergy in anyone who walked through the door.

He hadn’t quite imagined… a little ten pound thing that could tip over if the breeze blew the wrong direction.

“We’ll have to name her something else.” He looks at the volunteer who’s hovering at a polite distance. “Does she answer to Carol? Does she like it?”

“She doesn’t answer to… anything,” the volunteer says carefully, and Niall’s gifted enough at reading between the lines to know the pup’s untrained and doesn’t listen and might generally be a terror.

She’s fucking cute though.

Niall kneels in the kennel next to Jack, his knees objecting for a bit before they settle in.

She stops licking at Jack’s face and looks over at Niall, her dark brown eyes hesitant, like maybe she can sense his own hesitation.

“Alright?” Niall asks her, reaching out a hand to let her nose at him first before he strokes her head gently.

Jack gives an _oof_ as she jumps off his chest and comes trotting into the space between Niall’s legs, circling and circling before she jumps up and rests her paws on Niall’s thigh.

He lets her lick at his fingers and the gnaw lightly at them until he’s maneuvered his hand to just where she wants him - scratching at the delicate spot behind her left ear. Niall bookmarks that for later reference because he gets the feeling he’s going to need it.

It’s just like Jack to fall in love with a dog at the first shelter they visit, to have it all sewn up in a matter of minutes because he knows a sure thing when he sees one.

Niall nudges at her and she makes a little delighted noise as she loses her balance and stomps around on the floor before jumping up again. She looks back up at Niall, her tongue lolling out, and there’s something about her expression that reads, _do it again._

“What kind of dog even is this,” Niall murmurs. A ridiculous one, like a toy, one that’ll have to take six steps for every one of Jack’s, Niall’s thinking.

But Jack ties it up neatly.

“Our kind of dog.”

Niall nods. “Yeah.”

Niall sorts out the particulars with the volunteer - her age (two years), how big she’ll get (she’s done growing), her vaccinations (up to date), and whatever else. But none of it matters really - even if she weren’t perfect straight away, they’d do whatever it took to get her ready to be adopted. This is their dog, Niall can just feel it. Niall can also hear it, because Jack keeps saying it to her, over and over, like a promise.

They spend upwards to three hours with her, far longer than Niall’s certain they were supposed to, but he’s not above a special fame-based dispensation if it means he and Jack get to trade off on an epic battle of tug of war until it’s just about time for her dinner.

Niall excuses himself from her kennel as Jack scoops her up into his arms for a final goodbye.

“ _I love you I love you I love you_ ,” Jack’s whispering, pressing kisses into her fur, and not to put too fine a point on it, but it was about eight or so months of solid time and effort before Jack ever said such a thing to Niall, but whatever, that was mostly Niall’s fault anyway.

There’s six forms they’ll have to fill out, the first one starting with the dog’s name. Niall looks over at Jack and finds him already looking back.

“What should we name her?”

“You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Almost certainly,” Jack allows, which Niall smacks him for, “but say it anyway.”

“I was thinking Whiskey.”

“I like that.” Jack pauses to ruminate on it. “No, I love that. Whiskey. Whiskey girl, my dog Whiskey. Whiskey, come inside! Whiskey, sit. Whiskey. Whiskey.”

Niall waits a moment to see if he’s going to keep going before he responds, flat, “Have you got that all out of your system?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Niall grins and carefully inks in her name until Jack nudges at his shoulder and nearly cocks it up.

“What is that - we’re not spelling it with an e.”

“We are, because that’s how Whiskey is spelled.”

“No, gimme that.” Jack makes a desperate grab for the pen, and Niall only just manages to slip it out of his reach.

“Why?”

“I’m marking it out.” Jack’s hands slide down Niall’s back, trying to unfocus him, trying to collect up the hand he’s stowed there, but Niall’s too quick for him. He’s a wily bastard. Niall’s got the pen, because Niall’s got the clearest handwriting, therefore Niall’s got the power. It’s a simple equation.

“You’re a child.”

“I’m a grown man,” Jack insists, about to launch another offensive strike when he’s interrupted by the volunteer.

They look at her as she says, patiently, “We’ll still have to call her Carol. Until she’s released to you. For record keeping purposes.”

“Right,” Niall says, scratching out Whiskey, and barely fitting into the space left, under great duress, Carol.

Six pages and a generous donation later, they’re released back into the world. Niall’s turned toward the car, but Jack loops an arm around his waist and tugs him until they’re over by the brick facade, out of view of the glass doors leading into reception.

They fall into a loose hug, and Jack kisses at the side of Niall’s head, impossibly giddy as he announces, “Hey, we got a dog today.”

“We’ve got a dog in a week, but go on.” It’s the one and only time Niall’s ever actually wanted to say, _don’t you know who we are, give us the dog now_ , but there are rules for a reason and the one week waiting period will be well-spent dog proofing the house and gathering a million supplies to spoil her absolutely rotten.

Jack’s voice quiets, impossibly sincere. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Niall echoes, maybe nonsensically, maybe not. He’s not doing Jack a favor, he can’t think of it that way. It’ll be their dog, through and through.

At the pet shop an hour later, they end up with a two-sided tag - one side engraved _Whiskey_ , the other _Whisky_ \- and a woven pink collar for their dog.

\----

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you need us, we are [here](https://veryniceandgood.tumblr.com). Tumblr fic post is [ here](http://veryniceandgood.tumblr.com/post/181489886246/water-of-life-jack-lowdenniall-horan-137k).


End file.
